It's Eric Reed

Eric Reed's trio meeting with bassist Rodney Whitaker and drummer Willie Jones III covers a lot of musical ground. Starting with a dash through Benny Golson's "Stablemates," a playful interpretation full of quotes and detours into Monk-like chords and classical-flavored runs, Reed works effortlessly to keep the most familiar songs sounding new. John Coltrane's "26-2" is performed infrequently, but the pianist delights in its meandering theme as a challenge to his improvising skills. The sole standard is a sparse, lyrical arrangement of Rodgers & Hart's tearjerker ballad "It's Easy to Remember." The bulk of the session focuses on Reed's rewarding compositions. The jaunty "I.C.H.N. (For Herbie Nichols)" captures the spirit of a brilliant composer and pianist who was neglected by everyone except hip musicians during his all-too-brief life.

With Painting Signs, Eric Bibb makes a fine case for blues as a music of introspection, warmth, and supreme nuance. Easily his most mature album to date, Painting Signs continues Bibb's formula of socially aware songs performed from an acutely personal point-of-view; standout tracks "Don't Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down" and a cover of "Hope in a Hopeless World" hammer home his message of individual freedom and the responsibilities that accompany it. (It's no coincidence that Pops Staples, to whom Bibb dedicates this album, once recorded the latter song.) That's not to say Painting Signs is overly didactic or, indeed, "heavy" in any way; even the most serious songs here, like the plea for peace and unity "Got To Do Better," are leavened by a musical backdrop that's soulful and immediately accessible. Gospel-leaning backing vocals by Linda Tillery and her Cultural Heritage Choir help flesh out several cuts, and robust accordion fills by Bibb's longtime accompanist Janne Petersson add a subtle Louisiana flavor to the rolling, propulsive "Kokomo" and, to surprisingly good effect, the deep-grooved version of Jimmy Reed's "Honest I Do."

As its title implies, this is a spiritually based collaboration from three distinct – even disparate – yet surprisingly harmonious voices. Mostly, but not entirely acoustic, the trio of rootsy singers trade lead vocals on smooth jazz/blues ("Bessie's Dream"), folk-blues ("Good Stuff"), Delta blues ("Rolling Log"), gospel (an a cappella version of Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Rock Daniel"), and combinations of those genres. On paper it sounds scattershot, but in actuality this is a thoughtfully paced combination of styles, united by three affecting voices. Eric Bibb's smoother Keb' Mo' approach meshes surprisingly well with Rory Block's more penetrating Delta croon and Maria Muldaur's sassy, sexy, throaty growl.

The legendary Four Brothers reed section of Woody Herman's famous "Second Herd" big band of 1947, (Herbie Steward, Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and Serge Chaloff) is reimagined and reinvigorated by jazz icons Harry Allen, Eric Alexander, Grant Stewart and Gary Smulyan on the exciting, swinging and audacious recording of The Candy Men by Harry Allen's All Star New York Saxophone Band. Offering a sensational set of twelve bop-infused tunes containing some hard-driving, mid-tempo swing pieces to breathy and bossa-styled ballads, one sampling of this disc is just not enough. The material and the musicianship is so outstanding, that the late, great bandleader Woody Herman himself, would be proud of the way this group of jazz icons, has so elegantly represented the original Brothers section.

One might assume that bassist Christian McBride's CD Kind of Brown would be a tribute to Ray Brown. Au contraire – in fact, it would be appropriate for this recording to own up to the title Kind of Blue Note, because this music bears a strong resemblance to the late-'60s to mid-'70s recordings of the legendary Bobby Hutcherson-Harold Land quintet. That seminal post-bop ensemble defined the mid-period Blue Note label sound, and created resonant sonic signposts that remained unequaled, until now. A new discovery in vibraphonist Warren Wolf, Jr., teamed with veteran saxophonist Steve Wilson, the wonderful pianist Eric Reed, and drummer Carl Allen makes McBride's quintet dubbed Inside Straight into one of the more melodically tuneful and harmonically focused contemporary ensembles combining past tradition with a fresh new approach to this potent style of jazz.

"If you tend to be depressed it gets especially bad during the holidays," the famously depressed Harvey Pekar writes in his liner notes to Verve's Yule Be Miserable. "Everybody's prancing around the Christmas tree…while you lie in bed with a big headache…

The music on this three-CD set (released in 1997) won a Pulitzer Prize, but it's not without its faults. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis tells the story of two Africans (singers Miles Griffith and Cassandra Wilson) who are captured, brought to the United States and sold as slaves. Because the male had formerly been a prince while the female had been a commoner, he considers himself to be her superior. He asks for but then ignores the advice of a wise man (Jon Hendricks), gets caught trying to escape, discovers what "soul" is, finally accepts the female as his equal and eventually escapes with her to freedom. Marsalis wrote a dramatic, episodic and generally thought-provoking three-hour work, utilizing the three singers plus 15 other musicians (all of whom have significant musical parts to play) in a massive 27-part suite.